amity.

[Illustration: 253.jpg]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the original in the _Cabinet
des Medailles_.

He was represented as a man with two faces, whose eyes opened and shut
in an eternal alternation of vigilance and repose: six wings grew from
his shoulders, and spread fan-like around him. He was the incarnation of
time, which destroys all things in its rapid flight; and of the summer
sun, cruel and fateful, which eats up the green grass and parches the
fields. An Astarte reigned with him over Byblos--Baalat-Gublu, his own
sister; like him, the child of Earth and Heaven. In one of her aspects
she was identified with the moon, the personification of coldness
and chastity, and in her statues or on her sacred pillars she was
represented with the crescent or cow-horns of the Egyptian Hathor; but
in her other aspect she appeared as the amorous and wanton goddess in
whom the Greeks recognised the popular concept of Aphrodite. Tradition
tells us how, one spring morning, she caught sight of and desired the
youthful god known by the title of _Adoni_, or "My Lord." We scarce know
what to make of the origin of Adonis, and of the legends which treat him
as a hero--the representation of him as the incestuous offspring of
a certain King Kinyras and his own daughter Myrrha is a comparatively
recent element grafted on the original myth; at any rate, the happiness
of two lovers had lasted but a few short weeks when a sudden end was put
to it by the tusks of a monstrous wild boar. Baalat-Gublu wept over her
lover's body and buried it; then her grief triumphed over death, and
Adonis, ransomed by her tears, rose from the tomb, his love no whit less
passionate than it had been before the catastrophe. This is nothing else
than the Chaldaean legend of Ishtar and Dumuzi presented in a form more
fully symbolical of the yearly marriage of Earth and Heaven. Like the
Lady of Byblos at her master's approach, Earth is thrilled by the first
breath of spring, and abandons herself without shame to the caresses of
Heaven: she welcomes him to her arms, is fructified by him, and pours
forth the abundance of her flowers and fruits. Them comes summer and
kills the spring: Earth is burnt up and withers, she strips herself
of her ornaments, and her fruitfulness departs till the gloom and icy
numbness of winter have passed away. Each year the cycle of the seasons
brings back with it the same joy, the same despair, into the life of
the world;